


Une Journée de Juillet

by Lilliburlero



Category: 20th Century CE RPF, The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen, Pastiche, Poetry, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 15:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3655077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fugitive O'Hara fragment offers a clue to the poet's activities on the day after 'The Day Lady Died.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Une Journée de Juillet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naraht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/gifts).



> ...because Alec deserves more swoons.
> 
> *
> 
> thanks to Cah for Ameripicking.
> 
> *
> 
> 'Une Journée de Juillet' is also the title of a poem by O'Hara, written in 1955, and collected in _Poems Retrieved_.

POEM: WER, WENN ICH SCHRIEE

The man sitting smoking at the end  
of the jetty is a polygon in profile  
clasping his knees looking out  
to sea and getting a little closer  
I see the brown plissé of his skin above  
blue jersey trunks with a thin  
red stripe in the waistband  
and recognize him as the houseguest  
of the people who fed me last night  
(he was wearing a roll-neck then  
and an air of having made a good  
or at least the right impression that looked  
exactly like an invisible pearl choker)  
he's a surgeon in his mid-forties  
and his opinions on personal  
responsibility are as British as his teeth  
and the fricative he puts into _lieutenant_.

There are maybe eight or ten people  
in Manhattan I actually like but out here  
there’s a vacancy I can afford to feel  
generous about his drab island and throwaway  
voice  
          then the moment in which he is still  
unaware of me and his cigarette  
draw to an end his shoulderblades flex  
the whole sun’s cupped between his stomach  
and thighs for just about as long  
as it would take to cry out O  
for the élan of an orderly boy  
the callow treat of of a petty officer  
or the ministration of pale eyelashes  
(and if I did, who would hear me?)  
the wind gathers he slips on the wet  
rock just catching himself before he flies  
back with all the detritus of progress  
at his feet he opens his arms and saving  
his confidences for a time and someone  
who cannot take them in he says,  
                                                   Hello Frank  
I don't know how long I can go on like this

*

Donald Allen notes of this slight, undistinguished piece (understandably) never collected: 'Dated 18th July 1959, MS x408. The allusion to the _Duino Elegies_ is characteristic. The closing lines intriguingly parallel Walter Benjamin's now-celebrated meditation on Klee's 'Angelus Novus' in 'Theses on the Philosophy of History', which remained untranslated into English at the time of writing and indeed at O'Hara's death. The British surgeon has not been identified.'


End file.
